mtanyctransitfanonfandomcom-20200215-history
St George (SIRT terminal) (mtamaster edition)
St. George Terminal is a ferry, railway, bus, and park and ride transit center in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island, New York City. It is located at the intersection of Richmond Terrace and Bay Street, near Staten Island Borough Hall, Richmond County Bank Ballpark and Richmond County Supreme Court. St. George is one of the few remaining rail-sea connections in the United States. The rail station, signed as St. George, which opened on March 7, 1886, is the northern terminus of 3 out of 7 lines of the SIRT, the Blue, Red, and Brown lines. Service is provided 24 hours a day, every day. This station is handicapped accessible and it is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This station is situated in an open cut below street level, with a four-lane bus terminal and parking lot above it. The station has six active platforms and ten tracks, numbered 1 through 12 from east to west. All tracks end at bumper blocks at their railroad northern (geographic eastern) ends. The mezzanine area has separate fare control areas: the east side for passengers entering, and the west side is for passengers exiting. Just before each platform bay are the old destination indicators to the left and right of each platform entrance, corresponding to each departing track. There are green bulbs above these displays that indicate where the next train will be leaving from. This station originally opened with nothing overhead; no bus bays and no ramps. It was the site of a 1946 fire that nearly destroyed the terminal. History A new ferry and rail terminal at the St. George site (then called St. George's Landing) and an extension of the Staten Island Railway (alternate name for SIRT) north from Vanderbilt's Landing (today's Clifton Station) had been proposed in the 1870s by the owners of the Staten Island Railroad, George Law, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Erastus Wiman, to replace the various ferry sites on the north and east shores Staten Island. St. George was selected due to it being the closest point from Staten Island to Manhattan, approximately a 5 miles (8.0 km) distance. The name of the terminal and the local neighborhood were renamed to St. George in honor of Law, allegedly as a concession by Wiman in order to build the terminal and connecting tunnel on land owned by Law. An extension of the line to Tompkinsville was opened in 1884, and the underground tunnel between Tompkinsville and the terminal was constructed from 1884 to 1885. The ferry terminal was opened in early 1886, while the rail terminal opened in March of that year. The terminal's entrance building would be opened in 1897. The St. George rail terminal as originally built was constructed of wood, with no overhead obstructions. Adjacent to the station was a large freight terminal called the St. George Yard, where the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's freight operations exchanged with car floats to other terminals in the New York Harbor. The B&O also operated the SIRT and ferries under a 99-year lease signed in 1885. A trolley terminal for the Staten Island Electric Company was formerly located above the ferryhouse. The St. George tunnel was lengthened in 1905. It was built with two portals at its north end; one on the geographic east side currently in use by the SIR, and an additional western portal intended for the Staten Island Tunnel, which would have traveled across the Narrows and connected to the New York City Subway's BMT Fourth Avenue Line in Brooklyn. In 1923 an excavation shaft for the Narrows tunnel was constructed at the south end of the terminal near Shore Road, though construction was halted in 1925. On June 25, 1946, a large fire destroyed both the wooden ferry and rail terminals. Full service was restored in July of that year. A new facility was built by the city, opening on June 8, 1951, which led the tunneling shaft to be filled in. The new facility cost $21 million. The former freight yard was replaced by a NYCDOT Municipal Parking Lot when the new terminal opened, and is now also the site of the Richmond County Bank Ballpark. The station was served by the SIRT Main line (now the South Shore line) and North Shore Branch. The North Shore Branch was closed from 1953 to 1973 due to budget cuts and low ridership at the time. Tracks 11 and 12 on the north end of the terminal were unused at the time. As a result, tracks 1-10 were in use for the Main Line only. After the reopening of the North Shore Line in 1973, the terminal began being rebuilt to accommodate a third line, which was dubbed the Victory Line. Under construction plans, the four westernmost tracks were to be used by the North Shore Line, the four middle tracks for the Victory Line, and the four eastern tracks for the South Shore. By 1985, tracks 5-8 were closed off to prepare the new line for service and to realign the tracks for smooth service. The Victory Line and tracks were opened by August 1991. Station layout